Gilbert Cranberg: A Way to Curb Gun Massacres
Posted at 11:24 am, April 4th, 2012
Another day, another mass killing, this time in Oakland, CA. The gunman took seven lives in the rampage. He wounded at least three others. My local paper described the killings on Page 3 in a 25-inch story. The Times ran its similar length story on Page 10 plus a generous photo.
Not exactly massive coverage. It’s as though the public has become accustomed to mass murder in its news diet. And there’s likely to be more of the same as copy-cat killers strive for the spotlight. And there assuredly will be more as Congress virtually aids and abets mass murder by doing nothing to discourage sale of high-capacity ammunition magazines that any crazed killer with a grudge can buy freely. The ammunition clips enable anyone bent on mass killing to squeeze off many rounds quickly without reloading.
I haven’t seen a description of the magazine clip in the latest mass killing. The Times said the gunman threw his weapon into a body of water and it hasn’t been recovered. But surely, the clip had to be fairly sizable to account for so many bodies.
The near-death of a member of Congress in a mass shooting of 19 people in Tucson in January 2011 moved Congress to unctuous words of sympathy for Representative Gabrielle Giffords, but nothing else. Congress banned high-capacity ammunition clips from 1994 to 2004, but since then has given the green light to anyone to buy clips that are the vital ingredient for mass murder.
Can anything be done to prevent the killings to come? Yes!! No candidate at an election forum in the coming election should be allowed to leave the meeting without stating his or her position on reinstating the ban on high-capacity ammunition clips. Preferably, every candidate, including those running for president, should put a pledge to support re-enacting the ban in writing. Planks containing the pledge should be in both party platforms.
This country has a love affair with guns. It does not have a love affair with mass murder. It needs to get behind a practical way to curb it by reinstating the ban on high-capacity ammunition clips.
April 4th, 2012 at 3:40 pm |
Its difficult to have a conversation with gun grabbing ninnies like Mr Cranberg when they don’t even understand the lexicon.
A “magazine” is not a “clip” and a “clip” is not a “magazine”.
A “clip” is a device for holding cartridges together. A “magazine” is a spring loaded device with a follower that feeds ammunition into the firearms firing chamber.
I would also point out that any competent shooter can eject a detachable “magazine”, reload another detachable “magazine” and charge their firearm in less than one second.
So, to answer one tired argument with another , from our cold dead hands Mr Cranberg.
April 10th, 2012 at 5:29 pm |
Gilbert Grandberg, as usual I found your article full of insights and caring.
This is a reply to Mike H.:
You actually think you’re not a ninni when you have a gun in your hand? Particularly when you aim it at people who are not threatening you in any way?
I bet that without a gun you would be making a speedy retreat if anyone threatened you or threatened someone else. You’re the quintessential coward who is unable of discussing the actual content of an article. Or is it that you enjoy all those massacres and are afraid of owning up to your blood thirst? Is it “the more the merrier” as long as you’re not a victim.
As Beyond Left points out above, an unarmed woman, who was already wounded, kicked the gun out of the hands of the Tuscon shooter as he tried to reload (he might have not been able to kill the nine year old girl if he had been limited to 14 shots in his clip and had had to reload sooner).
I wonder, would you have the courage to do likewise or would you have crawled under the nearest table? Have you ever thought about what you would do in that sort of situation or are you only fantasizing about how many people you’d like to intimidate?
April 16th, 2012 at 7:45 pm |
Good post Mr. Cranberg & I think you did well to challenge the gun nuts in your blog. The speech by the head of the NRA this week attacking the press coverage of the Trayvon Martin shooting shows the continued lack of reasoning that drives a cause fueled by fear & paranoia & as one of the responders noted here, cowardice.
One of the things that I never understood was why no one connected the shoting of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords to the film Taxi Driver.
The shooting was an eerie acting out of the warnings presented in that film some 36 years ago. We will continue to have horrific scenes of violence & mass shootings until we confront the madness engendered by the bizarre culture that fosters guns for all.
And we need some new judges on the Supreme Court who know how to read the Constitution, which declares that the right to bear arms is part of having “a well regulated militia…”